Ain't

"In Praise of 'Ain't'"

Japanese Space

"The Japanese words for 'space' could change your view of the world"

Huemer On UFOs

Michael Huemer: "What's up with the UFO's?"

Time Travel Movies

"The Ars guide to time travel in the movies". (Via A.B.)

Monster Waves

"AI finds formula for how to predict monster waves by using 700 years' worth of data". (Via H.R.)

Mental Maps

"Why your mental map of the world is wrong"

Wireless Nerve Signals

Nature: "Wi-Fi for neurons: first map of wireless nerve signals unveiled in worms"

AI Self-Organization

"AI system self-organises to develop features of brains of complex organisms". (Via P.O.)

Thanksgiving Break

Admin note: Because of the US Thanksgiving holiday, GeekPress will take a short break. 

Happy Thanksgiving, and we'll see you all next week!

Self-Driving Vehicle Update

"Autonomous Vehicles Lower Insurance Costs"

The insurance giant Swiss RE did a study comparing human drivers with Waymo autonomous vehicles in the same zip-codes and found that autonomous vehicles generated significantly fewer insurance claims...

The End Of Coding

"A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft"

AI Weather Forecaster

"Google DeepMind's weather AI can forecast extreme weather faster and more accurately"

GraphCast can also offer meteorologists accurate warnings, much earlier than standard models, of conditions such as extreme temperatures and the paths of cyclones. In September, GraphCast accurately predicted that Hurricane Lee would make landfall in Nova Scotia nine days in advance, says Rémi Lam, a staff research scientist at Google DeepMind. Traditional weather forecasting models pinpointed the hurricane to Nova Scotia only six days in advance.

Ninth Dedekind Number

"Mathematicians Have Found The Ninth Dedekind Number, After 32 Years of Searching"

New Rotary Engine

"This inside-out design solves most of the rotary engine's problems". (Via H.R.)

 

Media Freak-Outs

Radley Balko: "A quick history of media outlets freaking out about stuff the kids are doing."

Cholesterol Control

"Crispr gene editing shown to permanently lower high cholesterol". (Via H.R.)

Story Plots

"Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots"

World's Writing Systems

"The World's Writing Systems"

Animal Spots

"A new study updates Turing's theory on how animals get their spots and stripes". (Via J.P.)

Popular Culture And Revolutions

"Barbie and Andor are useful for those who want to understand why revolutions happen and what it takes for them to happen."

World Records

"Anyone can break a Guinness World Record. I did"

Cutting Vegetables

Chef Jean-Pierre: "How To Cut The Most Common Vegetables"

Protein Language Models

Derek Lowe: "Try This Antibody Over Here". (Via G.F.)

ChatGPT Radiology Story

Dr. Longissimus: "Asked ChatGPT to write a short story about a medical student sent to radiology to ask for an MRI and was not disappointed"

Corn Maze Designer

"The A-maize-ing Life of a Corn Maze Designer"

Passkeys

"What the !#@% is a Passkey?"

A new login technique is becoming available in 2023: the passkey. The passkey promises to solve phishing and prevent password reuse. But lots of smart and security-oriented folks are confused about what exactly a passkey is. There’s a good reason for that. A passkey is in some sense one of two (or three) different things, depending on how it’s stored...

 

Silencing Doritos

"PepsiCo's Doritos brand creates technology to 'silence' its crunch".  (Via A.B.)

Note: This is AI to selectively cancel the crunching sound over computer audio without altering the voices of people speaking. This does not change the nature Doritos snacks themselves. The person eating the Doritos still enjoys the same sound and feel of the crunch.)

Musicians And Dystonia

"To the tune of dystonia"

Missing Colors In Rainbows

"Why Some of the Rainbow Is Missing". (Hint: Fraunhofer Lines.)

Othello Solved

"Othello is Solved":

The game of Othello is one of the world's most complex and popular games that has yet to be computationally solved. Othello has roughly ten octodecillion (10 to the 58th power) possible game records and ten octillion (10 to the 28th power) possible game position. The challenge of solving Othello, determining the outcome of a game with no mistake made by either player, has long been a grand challenge in computer science. This paper announces a significant milestone: Othello is now solved, computationally proved that perfect play by both players lead to a draw. Strong Othello software has long been built using heuristically designed search techniques. Solving a game provides the solution which enables software to play the game perfectly. 

(Via A.B.)

The PTSD of Cinderella's Mice

Video: "Cinderella's Mice Are Traumatized"

Antimatter And Gravity

"Antimatter falls like matter, upholding Einstein's theory of gravity"

Internet Artifacts

Welcome to the Museum of Internet Artifacts!

High-Tech Child Tracking

"Why this mom uses an Apple AirTag on her 3-year-old daughter". 

(Note: Shared as a FYI. I do not necessarily endorse this use of technology.)

Fighting Superbugs

"Superbugs including MRSA thwarted by unconventional vaccine".

"This is very different from developing new antibiotics," said Jun Yan, a doctoral student at Keck School of Medicine and the study's first author. "This is using our own immune system to fight against different superbugs, which is a different approach than everybody else."

Direct link to academic paper in Science Translational Medicine, "A protein-free vaccine stimulates innate immunity and protects against nosocomial pathogens".

Alien AI

BBC: "If alien life is artificially intelligent, it may be stranger than we can imagine". (Via Rand Simberg.)